Chapter 24: Gregoris @ 2.8x nhs
588 Words
Chapter 24: Gregoris @ 2.8x nhs
He got a text from Gal, that said, ‘Mt me @ elev,’ alligator emoji, ‘wr,’ pants emoji. Then, arrow emoji, capital L, man and woman emoji, bag emoji.
“What the f**k does this mean,” Greg asked, pointing the phone at Mel.
“The encryption level is beyond me,” she shrugged.
“You have no idea.”
“I have no idea,” she said, her face reverting to her mask-like features.
Greg scratched his head. That girl was gonna be the death of him. He was smitten, that much was clear. He didn’t even need to ask anyone for confirmation. All he could think about when not working was the time he had already spent with her, precious little that may be, and when he was going to meet her again.
He got dressed and went to his reception area.
“Get in, loser, we’re going shopping,” Galene announced, while leaning out from the elevator.
He obliged. “Where?”
“Where it’s free! At our company’s very own warehouse, floor 11,” she nodded.
“Nice,” he smiled at her.
He was dressed in what a rich person would call casual, but still fit like a glove. Gal resisted the urge to hug him. Everything was monitored inside the building. The penthouse was monitored too, but that feed was only going into an AI so it was a black box. She couldn’t show affection openly, no matter how much she wanted to.
The elevator whirred downwards.
“I got a little work done on my thesis last night,” she said.
“Excellent! I’m so happy for you.”
“I also worked on the code some more.”
“That’s great.”
She hesitated. “Greg?”
“Hm?”
“I want you to teach me. This, the overclocking thing.”
“No, sorry.”
“What? Why the he-” She composed herself. “Why not?”
“You’re still 22 years old. Your mind is still underdeveloped, it’s not safe doing that before the age of 25,” he explained.
“Did you just call me underdeveloped?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“No, I said your brain is still developing, really. It’s a medical fact, look it up.”
She stood there, fuming in silence.
The elevator glinged, and they got off.
He could see that her mood had soured, but he didn’t know her long enough to know if it would last.
“I thought about your locality thing,” she said, swiping her keycard. She was talking professionally at him, not a whiff of the earlier pep and tease.
“Okay.”
“You do things in different physical places so that you can help your mind shift gears. So we can get some secondary computers and experiment with speed reading techniques in different locations.” She waved at the guy at the door and they got into a tech warehouse. It was pretty much a nerd’s heaven. Stacks of computers, high-end graphics cards, drives, monitors, peripherals, network hardware, it was a supermarket of tech gear.
She started looking around, opening boxes, stacking stuff on the middle. Some stuff was pretty high up and he offered to help her reach them, but she refused and climbed a ladder thing they had around for just this purpose. Greg decided not to push her and he just sat at the corner.
“We can make a dedicated Rapid Serial Visual Representation Device, which parses the text into a single point and it flashes the words at whatever speed you choose. And there’s some sound-proofing material here, so we can make you a quieter workspace. I’m not a sound engineer, but my old group of friends back in Patra constantly worked with audio and I picked up some stuff.”
He nodded. “Sounds good, let’s try it.”
She finished stacking the stuff. “I’m gonna check these out, they’ll carry them for you upstairs. I’ll work on it after my shift, is that all right with you?” she asked coldly.
“5 o'clock? It’s alright.” He decided to give her some space.
“I have to work now. Goodbye.”
He bit his lips. “Goodbye.”
And she left him alone with a stack of hardware.
- Writer
